The present invention relates to a printer.
A conventional printer is arranged with a rotatable cylindrical platen formed of a material having a high coefficient of friction such as rubber, a paper guide is disposed around an outer peripheral portion of the platen with a predetermined gap therebetween, and a print head is disposed in such a manner as to oppose the platen.
When the paper is loaded on the printer, a leading end of a roll of paper is drawn out, and the paper is inserted into a paper passageway formed between the platen and the paper guide. The paper is then made to pass between the print head and the platen, and is then drawn out of the printer case.
However, since a material having a high coefficient of friction is used as the platen, as described above, the leading end of the paper is brought into contact with the platen at the time of loading the paper. Consequently, the efficiency with which the paper is loaded is poor. In addition, if the paper is loaded in an offset state, the extent to which the paper is wound around the platen becomes large, and the area of contact between the two is large, so that it is extremely difficult to correct the offset. In addition, there have been cases where offsetting or meandering of the paper occurs during conveyance of the paper.
For this reason, there is a printer in which a paper guide is provided with an auxiliary roll so as to make the operation of loading the paper smooth. However, since the paper is brought into contact with the platen in the same manner as described above, there is still the problem of the paper-loading efficiency, and the structure becomes complicated all the more because of the auxiliary roller.